Maharashtra completes physical verification of 23,000 wetlands

The National Centre for Sustainable Coastal Management (NCSCM) has completed 'ground-truthing' or physical verification of all but 11 of 23,415 wetlands in Maharashtra, paving the way for bringing them under legal protection under the Wetlands (Conservation and Management) Rules.

Ground-truthing involves survey of wetlands to confirm their existence, boundaries and present land use against satellite imagery. It is considered a crucial step before a wetland is officially notified under environmental laws.

According to the latest data uploaded on the Maharashtra wetlands dashboard maintained by the NCSCM, the remaining 11 wetlands are in Pune district and their field-level verification is still underway.

The wetlands surveyed so far include 247 in Thane district, 1,093 in Raigad district, 37 in Mumbai city and 210 in Mumbai suburban district.

Ahmednagar district has the highest number of wetlands in the state at 1,596, followed by Nashik with 1,236 and Chandrapur with 1,231.

''This process should not have taken 16 years after the National Wetland Atlas was launched,'' said B N Kumar, director of NatConnect Foundation.

''The prolonged delay has already caused considerable damage to Maharashtra's wetland ecosystem, particularly in biodiversity-rich areas of Uran and the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, where wetlands have remained under constant attack from debris dumping, encroachments and reckless land reclamation. With the ground-truthing exercise now almost complete, the government must immediately notify these wetlands and provide them legal protection,'' he said.

The NCSCM, functioning under the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC), was tasked by the Maharashtra government with satellite mapping, documentation and field verification of wetlands identified under the National Wetlands Inventory and Assessment launched nearly two decades ago.

The MoEFCC also launched the decadal-change version of the National Wetland Atlas in 2020 to track changes in wetlands over time, but Maharashtra's ground-truthing exercise continued to lag.

Nandakumar Pawar, director of environmental group Sagarshakti, claimed that the destruction of wetlands in Uran worsened flooding.

Officials said the verified wetland maps would now be forwarded to district administrations and the State Wetland Authority before the notification process begins.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)